


Canvas

by Crexendo



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Deception, Kitsune, M/M, POV First Person, Painting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crexendo/pseuds/Crexendo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where color tells the truth, Ichimaru Gin finds something that walks outside his realm of pigments and hues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Canvas

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for one of my bestest friends, and it's in Gin's POV. It is a bit cryptic, but I hope you enjoy it!

_They say color is life. Colorless is a state of death and emptiness. As an artist, I agree with that sentiment. But, at the same time, as the being named Ichimaru Gin, I don’t agree. Colorlessness is a state of anonymity, of invisibility. It is a state of power._

_People usually felt like one or two colors that describe them, those colors can be seen only by eyes trained to see them, for they are the colors of people’s souls. A person who is often angry or frustrated has a reddish hue about them. People who are sad or depressed had a dark bluish grey pigment surrounding their hearts. Happy people usually had yellow tones splashed across their inner selves._

_I remember the first time I saw him, that man whose colors all seemed painted on, whose hues appeared only skin deep. He was fascinating, and I found myself watching him as he made his way across the large public square. Brown hair, brown eyes, classic black suit, white shirt, magenta tie, dark-rimmed glasses. All of it seemed so superficial, in a sense that I’d never encountered before. His color was lost on me; I couldn’t make it out, almost like . . . it didn’t exist._

_This man had a colorless soul._

~

My paintings were very popular among the community, and were known for their accuracy. What they didn’t know, was that while I was painting a portrait of someone, I looked not at them, but inside them, where their true selves stood. I chose my colors based off that image, and not what was presented before me. A person’s colors were accentuated on the inside. 

I had a two month long waiting list for portraits, and I did all my paintings outside my apartment building, in the square nearby. I’d had people offer me high paying jobs and positions at large companies and galleries, but I turned down every single one. My skills were not to be monopolized or regulated, and I had no interest in human gain. 

Rarely did I ever do something for myself, or for anyone else, outside doing my paintings, but that man, the colorless one . . . I wanted to paint him. I wanted to capture his colorless image . . . but how does one color something that has no color? He was an enigma, something new and irresistibly mysterious. Hypnotizing. Addicting.

He walked through my square every morning, his clear earth-colored eyes never acknowledging anyone around him, not even me. Every morning, his colorless self taunted me with questions. _‘Why does your soul have no color? What is it about you that makes your soul look like mine? How? Who are you? Where do you go? Where do you come from? Won’t you look at me?’_

He was the first human that had ever caught my attention, so I was perplexed. What was it about his man that had me so enthralled? His lack of inward coloration . . . was startlingly similar to my own. But that was impossible. I was the last, the last of my kind. Only white Kitsune had colorless souls. That is why we had such love for manmade color. Tones, shades, hues, pigments, highlights, shadows, and raw **colors**. It was the only thing that made us happy these days, days in which those beings of power have long since faded into myth and fable.

All mystical beings have become a dying race. There are fewer and fewer of us each year, and it was six years ago that I became the last white Kitsune, a white fox spirit, in existence. With me, dies my kind’s legacy. Not that it’ll make much of a difference. Through the ages, Kitsune have lost much of their former power and abilities. I, myself, only possess a few of the skills my ancient ancestors had, and the knowledge of how to fully transform into our original fox forms has long since been lost, though I had succeeded in manifesting my tail and ears.

But that didn’t bother me so much. I definitely didn’t dwell on the sad state of my race as much as I thought about that tall, intimidating, but utterly beautiful man with the colorless soul. Over the weeks, he became my obsession, and my desire to paint him overwhelmed everything else. I needed to discover this man’s true colors, I needed to be able to paint him in his perfection. Maybe it was a bit overdramatic, but I had finally found something that interested me outside my world of oil paints and starched canvas. That, in itself, was something that had never happened to me before, and I could not deny its pull.

I watched him pass me, and everyone else by, every morning as he went . . . wherever it was that he went. But it wasn’t until amid the dark winter nights, several months after I’d first lain eyes on him, that I thought to wait for him to come back by. 

So, wait I did, into the early hours of the next day. Snow was drifting slowly down and I amused myself by watching the white flakes fall, then melt on the wet pavement. I didn’t mind the cold. As a Kitsune, I was strongly unsusceptible to temperature. It would have to be extremely cold or extremely hot for me to be bothered by it, though I still dressed accordingly, for appearances sake. I’d foolishly walked around wearing insufficient clothing once when I was in Russia, and I had an overly concerned citizen drag me to a clinic, where questions started getting asked, and I’d been forced to. . . silence them. Needless to say, I’d learned my lesson.

The square was empty and dark, and I was beginning to think that maybe he took a different route home, when my sharp senses heard the sound of footsteps. 

He looked as he always did; pristine, elegant in a masculine sort of way, graceful, and standing above the world around him. His colors, the clean white, the understated black, the soft brown, the bright magenta, all of it still looked watery and fake. Surface colors, colors that did not reflect his true self . . . I could not paint such a thing. It would not capture the true beauty of this man.

“Ya ‘ave a colorless soul.”

The words slipped out of my mouth before I even realized I’d wanted to say them, and for a second, I panicked. How could I explain how I knew that, what I meant by that? Would he even acknowledge me at all?

To my surprise, he stopped, and turned that depthless gaze towards me, finally focusing on me, those eyes that never saw anything but what was inferior. I felt my heart flutter with excitement, even as a chill ran up my spine from the icy cold gleam in his gaze.

“Excuse me?”

His voice, deep, smooth, and soft, like fine velvet, rang through my entire being, resonating in my soul, though I could never explain why it did. I hadn’t believed in destiny, or fate before this night, but this . . . for whatever reason, I was meant to meet him, and I knew that with a certainty.

“Ya ‘ave a colorless soul.” I said again, knowing that this human, this man with the empty soul, was not the kind of person who would let something that random go. “Ya’re colors ‘re . . . fake. Why?”

My guard was dropped, completely. I had thrown caution to the wind, and was now dancing in the fire. I wanted this man to acknowledge me, to actually see me as I was; a creature outside his world.

He regarded me with a faint interest and slight appraisal, as if he were trying to decide if I was worth his attention. This was a man who stood above the rest world, who saw everything around him as inferior, like a god trapped in mortal guise. Fascinating. Utterly enthralling.

“Why does that matter to you?” was all he said in reply, though I hardly expected more.

I shrugged a bit, feeling my usual grin return to my expression, “I find it . . . addictin’.”

One slim eyebrow arched, “Oh?” he said softly, with barely concealed amused aloofness, “Are you saying you’re addicted to my . . . lack of color? Should I dress differently?”

I chuckled a little, “Ya know perfectly well dat ain’t what I meant . . . Aizen-sama.”

His eyes narrowed slightly behind his glasses, which I was certain he didn’t actually need, and a hint of wariness entered his honey-brown orbs.

“And just how do you know that name?”

“I know everythin’ there is ta know ‘bout ya’re skin-deep self, Aizen Sousuke. But I’m not interested in dat part a’ ya.” I replied in a low voice, fixing him with a piercing ice blue stare. “I wanna know what it is dat makes ya so . . . depthless. Empty. Colorless. What I’m addicted to ain’t ya’re lack a’ color . . . it’s the **reason** ya’re colorless, dat has me so enthralled by ya. I wanna know ya. So damn badly.”

He, Aizen, continued to gaze at me with a now unreadable expression on his face. Droplets of water and unmelted snowflakes clung to his soft looking hair, making it sparkle faintly in the dim light of the streetlights placed around the corners of the square.

“Who are you?” he finally asked.

I flashed him a grin, rocking back on my heels. “Me? I’m naught but a ‘umble portrait paint’r. ‘M here every day, an’ I see ya pass by, lookin’ at da world like ya’re standing ‘part from it. Beaut’ful, pale . . . perfect. I wanna paint ya . . . but ya can’t paint dat without color.”

“And you said it was my soul that was colorless? What makes you think that?”

“I can see it.” I answered simply. “I can see ya’re soul. It’s ‘lmost identical ta mine.”

“To yours?”

“Kitsune ‘ave colorless souls. ‘S why we love art n’ color so much. ‘S as close as we can get ta dat which we lack. Ne, Aizen-sama?”

He was a smart man. He understood what I was implying. The suppressed astonishment in his eyes said as much. A faint trill of fear raced through me then. Would he believe me, or would he call me crazy, or think I was just toying with him . . . ? I was making a foolish, stupid, and completely idiotic move here . . . but I wanted him so badly, I was past caring about the consequences.

“Kitsune . . . as in . . . a fox spirit . . . ?” Aizen said slowly.

I nodded, not feeling the particular need or desire to speak aloud.

“You’re telling me that you’re a Kitsune? One of the white spirits from the ancient past?”

“Not from da past. But descended from those in da past, when mah kind was a’ da height of der pow’r. Nowadays though . . . it’s just me.” I said, hesitating for just a second. “I’m da last.”

An empty silence only filled by the sound of a cold winter wind blowing through the square draped itself over us like a heavy blanket. I was starting to think . . . maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe my obsession with this man was merely me overreacting to finding something that defied the normal confines of my life, something that walked outside the boarders of normalcy. 

“Can you prove that? Prove that you really are, as you say . . . a white spirit fox?”

I jumped at the sound of Aizen’s voice, startled by his words and the fact that he’d spoken at all. “Wh . . . What?”

“I asked you if you can back up your claim.” He said, still as calm and collected as he had been the moment I’d told him he had a colorless soul.

This was something I hadn’t expected, but probably should have. Logically, if he believed in the possibility that I might be telling the truth, then he would want to be absolutely certain. It was fair enough, but . . . what would happen then? In reality . . . I didn’t want to think about what might happen in the future, even the near future . . . I only wanted to stay in this moment. With him.

“O’ course I can. Ya really think I’d make such a claim wit’out a way ta back it up?” I smirked, masking my simmering anxieties behind my usual meaningless smile. “But not ‘ere.”

Aizen’s eye flashed briefly. “Why not here?” he asked.

I shrugged again, “I ‘ave ta be careful who sees me . . . especially if I’m gonna show ya dat Imma Kitsune. If da wrong . . . **people** saw . . . it could be bad fer you, an’ fer me.”

A faint smile of smug amusement tugged at Aizen’s lips. “Then why are you showing me? You don’t know what I might do with a real Kitsune, if you are really what you say you are. I might bring in the media, or put you on display in a zoo or something. Maybe keep you as a pet . . . .” 

I shuddered at that last statement, and let out a quiet laugh, “Ya wouldn’ do dat . . . I know ya wouldn’.” I purred as I started to walk towards the shallow stone steps that led up and out of the square, towards my apartment complex. “Though,” I said, stopping to gaze at him over my shoulder, “I don’t think I would mind so much if I were yer pet. Now follow me if ya want yer proof.”


End file.
